The Feminist Politics of #Selfies

CHICAGO — The selfie is an aesthetic with radical potential for bringing visibility to people and bodies that are othered. This week we present to you a few instances of empowerment that we caught via the #feministselfie hashtag on Twitter, which began in response to a post on Jezebel that suggests all selfies are a cry for help. These feminist selfies are important, relevant, and integral to the ongoing conversation around #selfie culture. I recently presented a theory of the selfie, which posits that as we increasingly live in public and that our selfies are our networked identities, connected, refracted, and devoid of context. Those who see us are our mirrors, reflecting how we look back to ourselves and out to the internet world. These selfies and conversation snippets about them on Twitter help us understand who controls the mirror and who’s allowed to make images, including of themselves.

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JosephYoung

surely ageism as well as sexism is part of [some] of the anti-selfie stance [which, forgive me, you might well have already addressed in your discussion of the subject].

Eileen

So many people disappear when they get older. The emphasis is always on the young and beautiful. Remember the aged. They have a beauty of their own.

Eileen

Any artist who have who have centred on the older person out there. Its my final year and what my dissertation and final show is about for my Fine Art Painting degree. Could do with some contemporary artists interpretation. Not just Whistler’s Mother etc.